Saline Area Schools Joins County Alliance After Addressing Concers About Local Control

After receiving assurances that doing so would not diminish local control, the Board of Education unanimously approved a resolution to participate in the Washtenaw Alliance for Education.

The alliance, which hopes to include a superintendent and two board members from each school district in the county, is being formed to lobby local and state legislators on educational issues and to explore options for sharing services and collaborative programs.

Board members David Holden, David Zimmer and Todd Carter pressed Scott Menzel, Superintendent of the Washtenaw Intermediate School District, for details. Menzel appeared before the board to talk about the goals and functions of the alliance. He said he the alliance will meet monthly to build on some of the lobbying that is done at the triannual legislative breakfasts where school officials meet with state and local legislators.

“Those are nice events but they weren’t deemed to be particularly effective,” Menzel said.

When it comes to agreements on shared services, Menzel said, an alliance that includes board members might be more effective than the county superintendents’ association.

“Superintendents can have conversations all day long, but unless there are votes at the board table, these issues don’t go anywhere,” Menzel said.

School board members eventually agreed to join the alliance. But not before 30 minutes of questions.

“With Ann Arbor having the dominant population, how will voices in Milan, Dexter, Chelsea and Saline be heard,” asked Zimmer.

Menzel replied that each district will have equal representation on the board. He also said that the alliance was going to be working on issues where districts had shared goals.

“We’re not going to engage in issues that will be divisive. We want to leverage our strength in areas where we are unified,” Menzel said.

Holden said he needed convincing that this was not just an educational lobby group. Menzel said this alliance could help school district determine where it makes sense to share services. He said having superintendents and board members talking about the issues would build the trust necessary to go forward.

Menzel said that a countywide discussion on shared transportation services might have been more effective with the alliance in place.

Zimmer said that was one his concerns.

“We had the transportation question a year ago. Thanks to the great work done by (Superintendent) Scot (Graden) and our team, our cost model is far better than the county-wide model,” Zimmer said, before asking if Saline would have been forced to go with a county-wide system that was more expensive if the alliance existed last year.

Menzel said that the focus of the alliance is policy and that there would be no expectation that a school district would be asked to do something that would cause it to spend more money.

“In Livingston County, we had a situation where we were considering sharing transportation. Four of the five districts opted in, and the other elected to keep it in-house,” Menzel said.

Carter said he thought the idea sounded well-intentioned, but said he was concerned their might be a long-term power grab somewhere in the details.

At one point, Holden asked to table the motion until the alliance adopted language calling for an annual review process. Eventually, the board passed the resolution, making it contingent upon the alliance adopting a formal review process.

Following the meeting, the president of the union representing the district’s support staff urged board members to be mindful of the sacrifices already made by the district’s employees.

“I am concerned when I hear shared services. We did conceded a lot to keep transportation in the district. We are conceding all the time. We want our jobs,” said Valerie Porter. “I need to trust you when you to the alliance, which I do not support, that are going to treat us well.”